Murcheston: The Wolf’s Tale

Murcheston: The Wolf’s Tale

by David Holland

Murcheston; The Wolf’s Tale David Hollander Forge Books 2000 352 pages ISBN 978-0312872137 Written in the epistolary style of Dracula and Frankenstein, Murcheston is a period piece set in Victorian England. Edgar Lenoir, Duke Of Darnley, sets out to document his transformation from “mere” aristocrat to werewolf. The central character is vain and selfish but at first still sympathetic. Along the way, though, he begins to rationalize his horrific acts and sets the stage for his own eventual damnation. The novel is brazenly ambitious, using the werewolf to explore the concept of morality in a manner akin to Oscar Wilde’s The Portrait Of Dorian Grey. While it falls short of the depth of that remarkable novel, I found it nonetheless an excellent, compelling read that to this day ranks among my very favorite treatments of the werewolf in modern fiction.